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"Charles Darnay and The Marquis,"
full-page illustration, for Book Two, Chapter Nine ("The Gorgon's Head")
in the Diamond Edition, by Sol Eytinge, Jr., in Charles Dickens's
A Tale of Two Cities (Boston: Ticknor and
Fields, 1867).

It would be a mistake to envisage the Marquis as a mere
popinjay, as Charles Keeping did for the 1985 Folio Society volume, for
underneath the sophisticated veneer lurks a voracious savage who consumes
not merely chocolate in small quantities but the entire income of his
benighted peasantry. He is both an individual — Charles Darnay's
uncle — and a type, "Monseigneur," the quintessential French aristocrat.
Eytinge's study of the two St. Evrémondes is so effective
because, taking
his cue from the text, the illustrator contrasts the underlying, feral wiliness
of the aging, decadent aristocrat with the frank openness of his more
liberal and enlightened nephew, now using his mother's surname, Darnay.
The meeting between these polar opposites from France's first estate
occurs in the rural chateau of the Marquis shortly after his callous
disregard for the third estate has resulted in a child's being run over by
his carriage — and shortly before the Marquis himself will be found
murdered in his bed. Suggesting his evil and egocentric nature by the
dark shading around the eyes, Eytinge has based his portrait of the
insensitive nobleman upon Dickens's description of "Monseigneur" in
an earlier passage:

He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty
in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent
paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it.
The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the
top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only
little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in
changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and
contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look
of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with
attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the
line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much
too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a
handsome face, and a remarkable one. [Book 2, Chapter 7; i. e., Ch.
13, "Monseigneur in Town"]

However, the scene that Eytinge realises in "Charles Darnay and the
Marquis" occurs several chapters later, when the nephew appears before
his uncle to severe all connection with the detested aristocratic family:

. . . the Marquis went on with his supper. He was half way
through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing
the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the
chateau.

"Ask who is arrived."

It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few
leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished
the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur
on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as
being before him.

He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited
him then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little
while he came. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.

Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did
not shake hands.

"You left Paris yesterday, sir?" he said to Monseigneur,
as he took his seat at table.

"Yesterday. And you?"

"I come direct."

"From London?"

"Yes."

"You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with
a smile.

"On the contrary; I come direct."

"Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long
time intending the journey."

"I have been detained by" — the nephew stopped a
moment in his answer — "various business."

"Without doubt," said the polished uncle.

So long as a servant was present, no other words passed
between them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together,
the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that
was like a fine mask, opened a conversation.

"I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the
object that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril;
but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it
would have sustained me."

"Not to death," said the uncle; "it is not necessary to
say, to death."

"I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, "whether, if it had
carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me
there."

The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the
fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the
uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight
form of good breeding that it was not reassuring.

"Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I know,
you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to
the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me."

"No, no, no," said the uncle, pleasantly.

"But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glancing
at him with deep distrust, "I know that your diplomacy would stop me by
any means, and would know no scruple as to means."

"My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine
pulsation in the two marks. "Do me the favour to recall that I told you
so, long ago."

"I recall it."

"Thank you," said the Marquis — very sweetly
indeed.

His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a
musical instrument.

"In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, "I believe it to be
at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a
prison in France here."

"I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping
his coffee. "Dare I ask you to explain?"

"I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the
Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a
letter de cachet would have sent me to some fortress
indefinitely."

"It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness.
"For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to
that extent. Pray excuse me!"

"I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day
before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the nephew.

"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle,
with refined politeness; "I would not be sure of that. A good
opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude,
might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence
it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you
say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these
gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours
that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and
importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted
(comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such
things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right
of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such
dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom),
one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing
some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter —
hisdaughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has
become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might
(I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real
inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!"

The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook
his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country
still containing himself, that great means of regeneration.

"We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern
time also," said the nephew, gloomily, "that I believe our name to be
more detested than any name in France."

"Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the high is the
involuntary homage of the low."

"There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, "a face I can
look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any
deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery."

"A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of the
family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its
grandeur. Hah!" And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and
lightly crossed his legs.

But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table,
covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine
mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness,
closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's
assumption of indifference.

"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark
deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will
keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to
it, "shuts out the sky."

That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a
picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of
fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have
been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his
own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the
roof he vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the sky in
a new way — to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into
which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand
muskets.

"Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the honour
and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued.
Shall we terminate our conference for the night?"

"A moment more."

"An hour, if you please."

"Sir," said the nephew, "we have done wrong, and are
reaping the fruits of wrong."

"We have done wrong?" repeated the Marquis, with an
inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to
himself.

"Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so
much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's
time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came
between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my
father's time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's
twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself?"

"Death has done that!" said the Marquis.

"And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a system
that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it;
seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey
the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy
and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in
vain."

"Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis,
touching him on the breast with his forefinger — they were now
standing by the hearth — "you will for ever seek them in vain,
be assured."

Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his
face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood
looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once
again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine
point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him
through the body, and said,

"My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under
which I have lived."

When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff,
and put his box in his pocket.

"Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after
ringing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But
you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see."

"This property and France are lost to me," said the
nephew, sadly; "I renounce them." [Book Two, Chapter Nine, "The Gorgon's
Head"]

To make the connection between the earlier verbal portrait and the
figure of the Marquis in this scene, Eytinge has added the demitasse of
chocolate; however, the small table is hardly suitable for the dinner
of one person, let alone two, so that the illustrator has had to foreshorten
the table in order to accommodate both figures.